Tuesday, June 08, 2004
My conversation with John Williams
John Williams called this morning (ha! Wish you were me now, Spencer?), at the ungodly hour of ten-thirty. He was calling in lieu of responding to the e-mail I sent him a couple of weeks ago (the e-mail whose text is available in the May portion of this blog's archive). He explained that he's a bit of a luddite, and prefers phone contact to e-mail contact. The following is, roughly, how he responded to each of my questions:
1. What is the role of a Member of Parliament, in your view?
Mr. Williams decided to instead explain the role of Parliament. In his view, Parliament exists for three reasons:
1. To debate legislation put forward by the government and to make the public aware of this legislation's effects.
2. To pass supply motions.
3. To receive reports from government.
Had I had my wits about me, I would have asked him about his perception of the representative's role, with regards to populism or lack thereof, but, as I mentioned earlier, his phone call woke me up, so I wasn't totally conscious until later in the conversation.
2. What value do you ascribe to sitting as a member of a caucus? To what extent are you prepared to compromise your personal beliefs or your perception of your constituents' beliefs to maintain the unity of your party's caucus? Under what circumstances would you leave your party's caucus to either sit as an independent or join a different caucus?
Mr. Williams indicated that politics is a team sport, and that, in order to get anything done, you need to be part of a coalition. For this reason, he ascribes great value to sitting as part of a caucus, and believes in bloc-voting, after the caucus has adopted a consensus on a given issue. In his view, this does not mean that he has to yield to the majority, but rather that the majority in the caucus must accomodate minority viewpoints, to allow for the development of a true consensus. He declined to answer the final question, describing it, correctly, as "hypothetical".
3. What action, if any, should Parliament take on recognizing same-sex marriages?
Mr. Williams believes that Parliament should have a free vote on the issue, and that the Supreme Court reference should be withdrawn, on the basis that the question of the definition of marriage ought to be a political question rather than a legal one. When I asked him how he would vote in such a free vote, he indicated that he is on the record opposing same-sex marriage, but supporting extension of full spousal benefits. He did not seem interested in delegislating marriage all together, as some members of his caucus have suggested.
When I asked why the vote on this question should be a free vote when he just told me that caucuses should develop consensus and then vote in a bloc, he told me that this, like capital punishment, was a "moral issue", which he defined as one that Canadians considered to be closely tied to personal ethics and morality rather than the minutae of policy development.
4. What action, if any, should Parliament take on marijuana?
Mr. Williams supports decriminalizing possession of small quantities of marijuana, though he thinks the thirty gram limit put forward in Martin Cauchon's bill was too high, saying that his understanding is that that's enough for a "weekend party" (while emphasizing that he's not speaking from personal experience). He expressed an understanding that a large proportion of young people do use marijuana at one time or another, and that, in his view, this is not appreciably more damaging than using alcohol. He considers it a waste of police resources to charge people for simple possession, and is also concerned about the arbitrary nature of such charges, given that only a very small percentage of the people who commit the crime in question are actually charged.
He believes that possessing marijuana for trafficing purposes should be punishable harshly, and thinks that legislation should stipulate a quantity of marijuana as being the dividing line between possession for personal use and possession for trafficing purposes. He admitted that he does not presently know where that line should be.
When I asked him whether the status of marijuana as a criminal substance is a "moral issue", and therefore whether it ought to be subject to a free vote, Mr. Williams replied that it was not, and that it would therefore be subject to caucus consensus. He declined to speculate as to what consensus a post-election Conservative caucus would reach.
5. What action, if any, should Parliament take on meeting Canada's Kyoto commitments?
Mr. Williams began by pointing out that Kyoto is dead, which brought the score to John Williams 1, Steve Smith 0. I hastily reworded the question to ask what he thought Parliament should do about climate change in general. He indicated that he favoured reducing emissions, but that he considered the Kyoto targets to be unrealistic. When pressed for specific actions that Parliament should take in reducing emissions, he identified tax incentives for technological research, and then proceeded to talk about a number of private sector innovations in emmission reduction. He also noted that his understanding was that the United States is making significant efforts to reduce CO2 emmissions.
Finally, Mr. Williams commented that Kyoto was only intended to address greenhouse gasses, and not "pollution", which I took to mean things like Sulpher Dioxyde and particulate matter. I asked him if he believed that emmissions of greenhouse gasses and particulate matter was correlated, and he answered in the negative.
6. What action, if any, should Parliament take on structural reform to government, such as Senate reform or electoral reform?
In keeping with what he earlier identified as being the roles of Parliament, Mr. Williams described such matters as these as being "the froth on the beer" - not the core of Parliament's function. He favours fixed election dates and an elected Senate. When questioned on what exactly the latter should look like, he said that he felt that previous attempts at re-opening the Constitution had proven that consensus on such matters was impossible, and that the best approach would be the one that Stephen Harper has advocated - "getting the ball rolling" by appointing Ted Morton and Bert Brown to the next Alberta Senate vacancies. When I pointed out that this would not actually involve action by Parliament, he agreed, but noted that his election as MP would make it more likely that Stephen Harper would become Prime Minister, and therefore that this ball might be made to roll.
He also suggested that the problem was not that changes needed to made to Parliament so much as that changes needed to be made to parliamentarians, such that they, especially backbenchers from the governing party, be more diligent in fulfilling the requirements of effective government oversight. He was not able to explain clearly to me how this viewpoint was consistent with his belief in caucus solidarity.
Because my wits were not about me, I neglected to ask him about his views on proportional representation.
7. If you are elected and are sitting as a backbencher, is there any legislation that you would try to introduce in the form of a private member's bill?
Again in keeping with his perception of the role of Parliament, Mr. Williams felt that the only legislation backbenchers should be introducing was legislation to help it perform its three tasks (So," I asked, "you won't be seeking to make Ammolite the official Canadian gemstone?" Mr. Williams - a Scottish born accountant, and therefore, one would presume, a fun guy, answered in the negative without giving any indication that he found the question amusing). He said that, since his election as MP in 1993, he had been pursuing something called "program review", in which each government program would have to be subjected to a review once every ten years in which Parliament (or a committee thereof) would have the opportunity to examine each program's purpose, how effectively each program was meeting its purpose, and whether its purpose could be met more cheaply. According to Mr. Williams, Paul Martin recently agreed to implement this program review, and he (Williams) will have to find a new bill to pursue.
8. Assuming that the present Liberal government remains in office after the election, under what circumstances, if any, would you support it on a confidence motion such as a budget?
Mr. Williams indicated that, as a member of the opposition, it is extremely unlikely that he would agree with a large enough majority of a Liberal budget to justify voting for it. He added that, in the event of a minority Liberal government, the Conservative caucus would examine how closely the proposed budget reflected the party's principles and then decide how to vote accordingly. He admitted that strategic considerations would likely play a role in this decision, but insisted that it would be a relatively minor one compared to the role played by the party's principles.
The conversation concluded with some niceties about the U of A Business program, me wishing him the best of luck, and him inviting me to call him if I had any further questions. All in all, while I disagreed with much of what he said, I found him far less patronizing than I remember him being during out last conversation. He clearly had a very strong understanding of the issues, and came across as having a great deal of professional integrity. To my surprise, our conversation brought me to the conclusion that if there were no other good candidates running in my riding, I would vote for Mr. Williams before spoilint my ballot.
To come: are there any other good candidates running in my riding?
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John Williams called this morning (ha! Wish you were me now, Spencer?), at the ungodly hour of ten-thirty. He was calling in lieu of responding to the e-mail I sent him a couple of weeks ago (the e-mail whose text is available in the May portion of this blog's archive). He explained that he's a bit of a luddite, and prefers phone contact to e-mail contact. The following is, roughly, how he responded to each of my questions:
1. What is the role of a Member of Parliament, in your view?
Mr. Williams decided to instead explain the role of Parliament. In his view, Parliament exists for three reasons:
1. To debate legislation put forward by the government and to make the public aware of this legislation's effects.
2. To pass supply motions.
3. To receive reports from government.
Had I had my wits about me, I would have asked him about his perception of the representative's role, with regards to populism or lack thereof, but, as I mentioned earlier, his phone call woke me up, so I wasn't totally conscious until later in the conversation.
2. What value do you ascribe to sitting as a member of a caucus? To what extent are you prepared to compromise your personal beliefs or your perception of your constituents' beliefs to maintain the unity of your party's caucus? Under what circumstances would you leave your party's caucus to either sit as an independent or join a different caucus?
Mr. Williams indicated that politics is a team sport, and that, in order to get anything done, you need to be part of a coalition. For this reason, he ascribes great value to sitting as part of a caucus, and believes in bloc-voting, after the caucus has adopted a consensus on a given issue. In his view, this does not mean that he has to yield to the majority, but rather that the majority in the caucus must accomodate minority viewpoints, to allow for the development of a true consensus. He declined to answer the final question, describing it, correctly, as "hypothetical".
3. What action, if any, should Parliament take on recognizing same-sex marriages?
Mr. Williams believes that Parliament should have a free vote on the issue, and that the Supreme Court reference should be withdrawn, on the basis that the question of the definition of marriage ought to be a political question rather than a legal one. When I asked him how he would vote in such a free vote, he indicated that he is on the record opposing same-sex marriage, but supporting extension of full spousal benefits. He did not seem interested in delegislating marriage all together, as some members of his caucus have suggested.
When I asked why the vote on this question should be a free vote when he just told me that caucuses should develop consensus and then vote in a bloc, he told me that this, like capital punishment, was a "moral issue", which he defined as one that Canadians considered to be closely tied to personal ethics and morality rather than the minutae of policy development.
4. What action, if any, should Parliament take on marijuana?
Mr. Williams supports decriminalizing possession of small quantities of marijuana, though he thinks the thirty gram limit put forward in Martin Cauchon's bill was too high, saying that his understanding is that that's enough for a "weekend party" (while emphasizing that he's not speaking from personal experience). He expressed an understanding that a large proportion of young people do use marijuana at one time or another, and that, in his view, this is not appreciably more damaging than using alcohol. He considers it a waste of police resources to charge people for simple possession, and is also concerned about the arbitrary nature of such charges, given that only a very small percentage of the people who commit the crime in question are actually charged.
He believes that possessing marijuana for trafficing purposes should be punishable harshly, and thinks that legislation should stipulate a quantity of marijuana as being the dividing line between possession for personal use and possession for trafficing purposes. He admitted that he does not presently know where that line should be.
When I asked him whether the status of marijuana as a criminal substance is a "moral issue", and therefore whether it ought to be subject to a free vote, Mr. Williams replied that it was not, and that it would therefore be subject to caucus consensus. He declined to speculate as to what consensus a post-election Conservative caucus would reach.
5. What action, if any, should Parliament take on meeting Canada's Kyoto commitments?
Mr. Williams began by pointing out that Kyoto is dead, which brought the score to John Williams 1, Steve Smith 0. I hastily reworded the question to ask what he thought Parliament should do about climate change in general. He indicated that he favoured reducing emissions, but that he considered the Kyoto targets to be unrealistic. When pressed for specific actions that Parliament should take in reducing emissions, he identified tax incentives for technological research, and then proceeded to talk about a number of private sector innovations in emmission reduction. He also noted that his understanding was that the United States is making significant efforts to reduce CO2 emmissions.
Finally, Mr. Williams commented that Kyoto was only intended to address greenhouse gasses, and not "pollution", which I took to mean things like Sulpher Dioxyde and particulate matter. I asked him if he believed that emmissions of greenhouse gasses and particulate matter was correlated, and he answered in the negative.
6. What action, if any, should Parliament take on structural reform to government, such as Senate reform or electoral reform?
In keeping with what he earlier identified as being the roles of Parliament, Mr. Williams described such matters as these as being "the froth on the beer" - not the core of Parliament's function. He favours fixed election dates and an elected Senate. When questioned on what exactly the latter should look like, he said that he felt that previous attempts at re-opening the Constitution had proven that consensus on such matters was impossible, and that the best approach would be the one that Stephen Harper has advocated - "getting the ball rolling" by appointing Ted Morton and Bert Brown to the next Alberta Senate vacancies. When I pointed out that this would not actually involve action by Parliament, he agreed, but noted that his election as MP would make it more likely that Stephen Harper would become Prime Minister, and therefore that this ball might be made to roll.
He also suggested that the problem was not that changes needed to made to Parliament so much as that changes needed to be made to parliamentarians, such that they, especially backbenchers from the governing party, be more diligent in fulfilling the requirements of effective government oversight. He was not able to explain clearly to me how this viewpoint was consistent with his belief in caucus solidarity.
Because my wits were not about me, I neglected to ask him about his views on proportional representation.
7. If you are elected and are sitting as a backbencher, is there any legislation that you would try to introduce in the form of a private member's bill?
Again in keeping with his perception of the role of Parliament, Mr. Williams felt that the only legislation backbenchers should be introducing was legislation to help it perform its three tasks (So," I asked, "you won't be seeking to make Ammolite the official Canadian gemstone?" Mr. Williams - a Scottish born accountant, and therefore, one would presume, a fun guy, answered in the negative without giving any indication that he found the question amusing). He said that, since his election as MP in 1993, he had been pursuing something called "program review", in which each government program would have to be subjected to a review once every ten years in which Parliament (or a committee thereof) would have the opportunity to examine each program's purpose, how effectively each program was meeting its purpose, and whether its purpose could be met more cheaply. According to Mr. Williams, Paul Martin recently agreed to implement this program review, and he (Williams) will have to find a new bill to pursue.
8. Assuming that the present Liberal government remains in office after the election, under what circumstances, if any, would you support it on a confidence motion such as a budget?
Mr. Williams indicated that, as a member of the opposition, it is extremely unlikely that he would agree with a large enough majority of a Liberal budget to justify voting for it. He added that, in the event of a minority Liberal government, the Conservative caucus would examine how closely the proposed budget reflected the party's principles and then decide how to vote accordingly. He admitted that strategic considerations would likely play a role in this decision, but insisted that it would be a relatively minor one compared to the role played by the party's principles.
The conversation concluded with some niceties about the U of A Business program, me wishing him the best of luck, and him inviting me to call him if I had any further questions. All in all, while I disagreed with much of what he said, I found him far less patronizing than I remember him being during out last conversation. He clearly had a very strong understanding of the issues, and came across as having a great deal of professional integrity. To my surprise, our conversation brought me to the conclusion that if there were no other good candidates running in my riding, I would vote for Mr. Williams before spoilint my ballot.
To come: are there any other good candidates running in my riding?
